T.D. Jakes in the Movies

Discover what T.D. Jakes has been up to lately as he discusses his new film "Jumping the Broom"

Bishop Jakes thanks so much for your time. What attracted you to the script?

Bishop T.D. Jakes: We were actually working on a script at the time that I thought was rather intriguing. Our storyline was dealing with families and how they overcome secrets and that every family has secrets and issues and so forth and so on. Then I found this script. It was presented to me and I thought that it was so similar in its tone to what we were going to do that we thought that with minor altering we could still project some of the same messages that we wanted to project within the confines of the script.

How does your character play a role?

My character has a very simple role. I mean I’m just a friend of the family that’s been brought in to perform a marriage for a family that I’ve worshiped with for a number of years and so my role there is to help to facilitate that. It’s a very easy role for me to play. I think for me my involvement with the film is not so much focused on acting itself as it is God has blessed me with a relationship with Sony and a conduit to produce films that otherwise would not be produced and to use that judiciously is my calling; to be able to communicate with my generation in every possible form and fashion. Occasionally I will stick my face in front of the camera but I think I’m probably most effective in the process of negotiating the bill that supports the film.

And if someone asked you is this a Christian film how would you characterize this film?

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I think that the definitions of Christian films are broadening every day. That the call of God is taking us to go into all the world to project, to maintain our values but to be able to present them in a way that is congruent with the mandate to go into all the world and to produce a film. I don’t like to be relegated over the Christian film because I think it alienates the very people we seek to serve. When you say that something is a Christian film, what does it mean? Does it mean that non-Christians shouldn’t see it or that it’s not for them? I think that what we need as Christians is a film that really reaches into all the world.

Do you see that’s the direction where faith-based film is starting to go into is more mainstream?

I think we have to go into that. I think that not only faith-based films, all films that are relegated over to particular communities like African American films or what have you are learning that as the world meshes together, as we commune through [the] Internet and through technology that we can no longer isolate any message to one group of people. And I think it’s very, very important to realize that people have an interest in faith. Even those who are not of faith and those are the people that we want to seek to serve. So we have not tried to label it or isolate our message and I think many, many more people are going more mainstream in their scope and their vision [is] to reach a wider audience.

Not Easily Broken was about marriage. [Jumping the Broom] is about marriage. Why a film about marriage?